Perennial Questions
Perennial Questions is a series for seekers and curious minds interested in timeless questions that everyone faces—how to live, what to value, what to accept, and what to become. Each volume explores these questions through the voices of philosophers, saints, and poets—and then grounds them in daily life.
How to Carry What You Can’t Fix
There’s a particular kind of fatigue that doesn’t come from doing too much.
It comes from lying in bed replaying the same problem—rewriting the conversation, rehearsing the next move, trying to solve a situation that won’t hold still. Your body is tired, but your mind keeps building arguments.
So you work the problem again: straighten out a crooked season, “figure out” a loss, make sense of a relationship that keeps shifting, heal someone who won’t be healed, control a future that won’t settle.
We call it problem-solving.
But underneath, it’s often a quiet refusal to accept the shape of reality.
Thomas Merton, an American Trappist monk, names the trap with disarming simplicity:
“Life is not attained by reason and analysis but first of all by living.”
That line doesn’t dismiss thinking.
It restores order.
There are truths you can’t reach with more mental effort. There are burdens you don’t lighten by rehearsing them. There are seasons you don’t escape by understanding them.
Some things you can fix.
Some things you can only carry.
1. Carrying begins when you stop demanding a solution.
We tend to believe peace arrives after we “figure it out.” After we find the explanation that makes it tolerable. After we resolve the contradiction.
But Merton suggests something more human: the pressure to resolve everything may be what keeps us stuck.
In Thoughts in Solitude, he offers a line that feels made for modern anxiety:
“We are not meant to resolve all contradictions but to live with them…”
And then he sharpens the point:
“Contradictions have always existed… [but] when we prefer analysis to silence… they become… insoluble.”
In other words, some contradictions aren’t problems to solve—they’re conditions to live within.
Not everything yields to analysis.
When you demand a solution to what is structurally unsolvable, life starts to feel like a courtroom. You cross-examine your days. You interrogate your feelings. You put grief on the witness stand.
And then you wonder why you’re exhausted.
Carrying begins when you allow life to be what it is—imperfect, unfinished, often ambiguous—without treating ambiguity as failure.
This doesn’t mean passivity. It means you stop confusing acceptance with approval. You can accept that something is true without liking it. You can accept that a season is hard without building your identity around the hardness.
2. What you can fix gets fixed by right-sized action, not frantic control.
A surprising thing happens when you stop trying to solve everything: you regain clarity about what is actually yours to do.
When you’re spinning—mentally, emotionally—you can’t tell the difference between responsibility and control. Everything feels urgent. Everything feels personal. Everything feels like it’s on you.
Merton isn’t against action. He’s against frenzy. He opposes the kind of effort driven by panic rather than wisdom.
So “carry what you can’t fix” becomes simple—and difficult: Fix what is yours to fix. Release what is not yours to control.
Fix what you can fix with a single honest move:
The apology you’ve been delaying.
The boundary you need to set.
The conversation you keep rehearsing but never have.
Then—the harder part—stop trying to extract guarantees from life.
Stop trying to “make sure” no one is disappointed.
Stop trying to pre-pay future pain with present anxiety.
The Carrying Practice
Each morning (or each evening), name:
One thing you will repair with a right-sized action.
One thing you will release from your mental grip.
You stop pretending you can do what you can't, and you do what you can—clearly, humanly.
3) Carrying what you can’t fix is a form of attention.
For Simone Weil, a twentieth-century French philosopher, the opposite of maturity isn’t doubt. It’s evasion—the reflex to escape suffering, numb it, explain it away, and cover it with cheap consolation.
In Gravity and Grace, she writes with startling clarity:
“We should seek neither to escape suffering nor to suffer less, but to remain untainted by suffering.”
Weil isn’t praising pain, and she isn’t telling you to endure what should be changed. She’s resisting the bargain we constantly try to make: I’ll face reality as soon as reality stops hurting.
“Untainted” doesn’t mean unhurt. It means not letting pain turn you false—bitter, evasive, numb, or performative.
What steps can you take when a solution isn't possible?
Weil’s answer is not willpower.
It’s attention.
She gives the practice an almost shocking dignity:
“Attention, taken to its highest degree, is the same thing as prayer.”
Even if you don’t consider yourself religious, you can feel what she means. There is a kind of attention that grasps—trying to control, solve, and manage. And there is another kind that stays present—without bargaining, without dramatizing, without turning suffering into a spectacle.
That kind of attention is rare.
And it changes the atmosphere of pain.
Because so much of our suffering is intensified by our refusal to be with it. We don’t just hurt; we panic about hurting. We don’t just face uncertainty; we rehearse catastrophe. We don’t just grieve; we shame ourselves for grieving.
Weil is offering a different posture: keep your consciousness of reality intact. Let suffering be present without letting it shrink you into someone smaller.
And this is where “carrying” becomes love.
Sometimes carrying looks like:
Sitting quietly with someone’s pain without trying to fix them.
Allowing grief to be real without rushing to find meaning.
Telling the truth to yourself about what you cannot change.
As time goes on, it transforms into a special kind of freedom—one where you no longer judge your worth by how much you can control.
It’s a gentle shift toward self-acceptance and peace.
Perennial Questions
What am I trying to solve that I may need to live with—patiently, honestly, without demanding closure?
What is one right-sized repair I can make this week—and what is one burden I need to release from my grip?
Where do I rush to fix someone as a way to avoid simply being with them?
Final Thoughts
Understanding that you don't need to possess all the answers to pain is the foundation of a mature life. It’s about knowing what you can change and what you must carry, and staying true to yourself regardless of circumstances.
Merton gently reminds us that life’s wisdom isn’t just about analyzing things but truly living them. Weil teaches us that paying steady attention—without turning away—is a beautiful and wise act of presence.
Fix what is yours to fix.
Carry what you cannot.
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Thank you for reading; I hope you found something useful.
Until next time, be wise and be well.
J.W.
P.S. If you found today’s meditation helpful, consider sharing it with a friend.
as always...fantastic!